


We shall be monsters

by liathach (tselina)



Series: Sequence [4]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Death, Good Intentions, How McCree Lost His Arm, How Mercy Made Reaper, Multi, Origin Story, PAIRINGS ARE IN NOTES, Resurrection, Road to hell, Team as Family, WARNINGS ARE IN NOTES, please read the notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 12:20:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8013511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tselina/pseuds/liathach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has not brought back the dead. She has brought the dead to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We shall be monsters

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNINGS** : Body Horror, (Temporary Non-Canonical) Character Death.  
>  **IMPLIED PAIRINGS** : Morrison/Reyes, McCree/Mercy, McCree/Genji/Mercy, Reyes/McCree. See notes at the end for further information and credits.
> 
> **EDITS ON JANUARY 2, 2017 TO REFLECT NEW PERSONAL CANON & HALLOWEEN!COMICS CANON. ** Includes more explicit (if subtle) Morrison/Reyes, indirect mentions of Ana (which somehow didn't make from draft to finalized prose, how did I miss that?!), and other small touches.

**EXCERPT FROM DOCTOR ANGELA ZIEGLER’S COURT HEARING, ON THE MATTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS’ INQUIRY ABOUT THE DISBANDMENT OF OVERWATCH. DAY 2, (DATE REDACTED). ******

MR. KING: Doctor Ziegler, it’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure. Please take a seat.

DR. ZIEGLER: Yes, likewise. Thank you.

MR. KING: Let’s begin. Could you please state your name?

DR. ZIEGLER: Angelika Sigrid Merian-Ziegler. I am called Angela.

MR. KING: Thank you, Doctor. Your profession?

DR. ZIEGLER: I am, am a Doctor of Medicine, as well as Microbiotechnology. Formerly, primary medical adviser of, of Overwatch.

MR. KING: Thank you, Doctor.

DR. ZIEGLER: Yes, of course.

MR. KING: All right. Let’s go forward. You were in Zürich, on (DATE REDACTED) when the Overwatch base was destroyed, I’m sorry, went down?

DR. ZIEGLER: Yes, I was.

MR. KING: Were you in the base, before it fell?

DR. ZIEGLER: Yes, I was.

MR. KING: Did you see the altercation between Strike Commander Morrison and Captain Reyes?

DR. ZIEGLER: I did not see the altercation.

MR. KING: You did see something, though?

DR. ZIEGLER: I do not recall seeing the altercation.

JUDGE LI: Next question, Mr. King.

MR. KING: Yes, Your Honor. Dr. Ziegler, do you know when Captain Reyes switched sides?

MS. NAVEEN: Objection.

JUDGE LI: Sustained.

MR. KING: I see, I’ll rephrase that. Do you know when things, the, Captain Reyes began to act in a way unlike himself? That you were unfamiliar with?

DR. ZIEGLER: I would like to speak to Ms. Naveen, off the record.

JUDGE LI: Allowed.

MR. KING: Ah, then let’s go off the record.

**

There is not enough blood in Jesse’s system to keep his heart pumping. Angela knows this as they lay him down. The brown of his skin has greyed; his mouth is white, and slack. The only color is the gleaming arterial blood from the burst bone in his forearm. It has taken them only minutes to find shelter in the maze-like warrens beneath the base. It is more than enough time for someone to bleed out, but Angela’s fingers find a pulse.

Jesse’s head lolls as Genji props him against a crate for emergency care. Angela takes each practiced step to remedy a shattered limb. A tourniquet, torn from the sleeve of Jesse’s Strike uniform, tied above the elbow. The limb is ruined, beyond repair of even her expertise. A problem with clotting, as well. It will need to come off. Genji, with his sword on hand, is as good as any field surgeon. He will be able to amputate, to cauterize the wound before it bleeds Jesse completely dry, steals his flickering, fading life --

“Angela, Angela.” Genji’s hand grasps her shoulder, almost to bruising. His garnet eyes are wide in his scarred face. “He has stopped breathing.”

“Give him air,” Angela orders, shifting focus from arm to heart, and Genji, too shell-shocked to do otherwise, obeys.

Angela rips open Jesse’s Strike jacket and digs her fingers into his bare chest to begin compressions. Her fingers skim in disgusted dismissal across the winged skull branded into the flesh of his left side, and find his heart instead. She ignores the crack of his ribs with each desperate shove. The yellow heat of her healing gauntlets threatens to sear their padding to her skin. Angela wills the nanotech to sink into Jesse’s lungs, to dive into his very bones, to pull blood from the marrow.

She realizes that there is no artificial rise of Jesse’s chest between compressions. There is no movement save her own. Genji has stopped breathing for him.

“Enough, Angela.” That synthesized voice, so gentle. She hears it waver. She looks up into Jesse’s face, pressing one hand against his bowed forehead to lift it.

Jesse is gone. The subtle, terrible slackening of muscle in his face and shoulders is telling. There is only sluggish blood from around the shattered bone, his lips and jaw scraped white where Genji’s half-metal mouth had worked to revive him.

He cannot die. Not here. Not their Jesse, with his indomitable will, his helpless love for the world, his noonday smile always enough to light their darkest nights.

For a moment, Angela thinks of the shock pads on her hands. She stares at him, fantasizes about pressing her palms against his chest again, summoning a lightning strike that would lead him up and out of his early grave.

Yet she knows a shock will only remedy a stuttering heartbeat. It will not raise the dead.

**

MR. KING: I will ask again. Do you know when Captain Reyes began to act differently?

DR. ZIEGLER: I do not recall the exact date, no. But I will say, say something.

MR. KING: Please do.

DR. ZIEGLER: After Morrison's promotion to Strike Commander, his relationship with Reyes changed, the, the tension became more pronounced as time went on.

MR. KING: So, all that time.

DR. ZIEGLER: Perhaps, not all that time.

MR. KING: They were good friends.

DR. ZIEGLER: We were all good friends.

MR. KING: Yes. Did Captain Reyes ever ask you to do anything you weren’t comfortable with?

MS. NAVEEN: Objection, Your Honor.

JUDGE LI: Overruled. Mr. King, rephrase the question.

MR. KING: Yes, Your Honor. Thank you, Your Honor. Doctor, did Captain Reyes ask you to perform any actions outside of your usual orders?

DR. ZIEGLER: I do not recall an instance of Captain Reyes requesting I go against my standing orders.

MR. KING: So you would act for him, if it did not go against your orders.

MS. NAVEEN: Objection.

(STATIC)

JUDGE LI: Sustained.

MR. KING: Yes. Doctor Ziegler. Can, can you tell me what you did, to, help with these possible tensions? Within the group.

DR. ZIEGLER: I tried to mend things. We all did.

MR. KING: I see. That is, is a shame.

DR. ZIEGLER: Yes, certainly.

MR. KING: Morrison was a hero. It’s a, a shame to lose him.

DR. ZIEGLER: Captain Reyes was a hero.

MR. KING: So, you’ll go on record saying that Reyes was a hero? You must have trusted him. Did you trust him?

DR. ZIEGLER: (Speaks German) [TRANSLATION: Get his name out of your mouth.]

MS. NAVEEN: Objection, Your Honor.

JUDGE LI: Sustained.

**

The District Eleven storehouse is a poor refuge for the five -- four -- of them. It will do for a few nights, and then they will need to move on. Perhaps to Reinhardt’s mansion, in the German wilderness. They will call the others, then. It is not safe to do so, now.

Winston carries Jesse in one arm like a swaddled child, gingerly and with wary tenderness. Angela and Genji had met up with the gorilla and a tight-lipped, pale Lena as they’d reached the final leg of their escape. There had been no time to explain, but the bloodstained bedsheet over Genji’s shoulders, with its thick, final weight, was explanation enough. Winston and Lena have seen more than enough death. They knew.

But they are safe, for the moment, and Angela’s attention drifts helplessly back to her abandoned duty. She rises, moving towards where Winston has laid his burden down beneath the shelter of a stretched, faded tarp, the sheet folded neatly by his side. Jesse looks almost whole. Perhaps Genji had stopped their work too soon. Perhaps, there is still a chance.

Lena grabs her shoulder, steps in front of her, stops her in her tracks.

“How can you be so fucking calm?” she says, her lips curled and cruel.

The contempt in Lena’s eyes is so stark that Angela take a step backwards.

“I am -- in shock, as the rest of you.”

Lena laughs, the sound empty of her perpetual mirth. “Oh, nice thing to say, after what you’ve fucking done.”

“Lena,” Winston warns, “that’s enough.”

“She threw her chips in with a -- a fucking traitor!” The words do not come easy from Lena's raw throat, an accusation against a man that was once a father to her. Lena braces herself as if to throw herself forward, and Winston moves automatically, stops her with a flat palm. Lena points at Angela, looking desperately between Winston and Genji for support. “If she’d just kept her mouth shut, then Jack wouldn’t have -- and Jesse --  _Gabriel_ \--  he wouldn’t have --”

Lena crumples down to her knees. She crawls forward on all fours. She hunches over Jesse’s body, a child-wolf defending a fallen packmate, and buries her face in the torn fabric of his fatigues. The blue light on her chest gutters as she weeps, and none of them can speak.

At last Winston gentles Lena away, before the girl tears herself apart through time and space; Genji lingers, his metal fingers tracing the familiar shape of Jesse’s jaw. Then his fist clenches, and he whirls, leaping, twisting away into the dark recesses of their safehouse, leaving Angela alone with their departed friend. She kneels beside him, her hands folded against her knees.

Jesse has been arranged as best they could manage. His legs are straight, his one good hand is folded over his stomach. His eyes are closed, his mouth loose in a purse, as if he is on the verge of speaking. There is no shadow of stubble along his jaw; he’d shaved clean that morning, in preparation for public appearances. His borrowed Strike uniform hangs too loose on him. Even in his younger days, when he was lean and lanky as a desert antelope, he was never so small.

At last, Angela moves, reaching to untie the tourniquet, to unfold it, to place it over his face to cover the eventual rictus of his handsome features. She doesn’t want to see that change. Her hand skirts over his face, her focus so intent that she startles with a little shriek when as he jerks in a sudden spasm.

A belated death throe, she thinks, as her heart pounds in her ears. Very common, as the body accustoms itself to death. But it happens, again. Again. His unbroken hand twitches. The broken arm flops like a landed fish at his side. Then, a rattle in his chest. His eyes roll beneath their lids, his lashes flutter. He breathes, somehow, weak but definite. He is alive.

Angela scrambles to her feet. Lazarus Syndrome, she thinks wildly. Patients code out for hours, sometimes, only to stutter back into life on morgue tables and in abandoned operating theaters. All known cases are preceded by chest compressions. Her arms still ache with that particular effort. There is still no known cause, but Angela will not question her luck.

She knows this particular storehouse well and what it contains. She whirls around, shoves one crate aside, and its contents spill with a great clatter. Two black cases, their straps tangled together: sniper rifles. Ana’s weapons, with Angela’s medicine. Each case has three vials of every drug: a nerve agent, a pain killer, a blood thinner, a tranquilizer.

And, gleaming with a film of golden, alchemical promise, her miracle healing serum. She loads it into the rifle, stands, and aims for Jesse’s heart.

The report of the shot makes her ears ring, the kickback staggers her, bruises her shoulder.

“Angela!”

Genji’s voice, from above. He lands, and she hears him skitter to a halt beside her, holding his breath. He looks at Angela, the rifle in her hands, and Jesse, gasping for air.

“Angela,” he whispers, “what are you --”

“Come here.” She tosses the rifle to the side, her head high. “I need your help.”

Genji remains frozen in place, rabbitlike. “Yes?”

“I need you to cut off his arm.” She crouches and takes Jesse under the armpits, pulling him up against the wall to brace him. He spasms against her, making short, heartbreaking noises of pain and struggle. But beneath his seizing limbs, under his chilled and ashen skin, the nanoserum does its work, repairing, rebuilding, reviving. “Hurry, get your sword out.”

“What?” Genji says, startled into Japanese. “You’re not serious --”

“Above the elbow, then burn the flesh,” she orders, then, as Genji wavers still, she snaps, “Do it!”

Genji draws his blade, casting a neon green glow in the darkened warehouse. There’s a hot push of air as the sword arcs down, a perfect crescent, severing muscle and bone with seamless grace. The ruined limb hits the ground with a dull clap. Jesse whines in animal pain as Genji begins to cauterize the wound. And Angela sees it: blood, trickling down from his raw skin, fresh and red.

Angela feels a fever take her. She stares at the open rifle case, thinks of crumpled bodies buried beneath smoking rubble, an unfitting tomb for such worthy heroes.

It had only been a handful of hours; Lazarus was dead for days before he was raised by the Lord. Perhaps He would work through Angela’s mortal flesh, to help her remedy her folly. To create another miracle. Clearly, she had been found worthy of this one.

She rises up, ignoring Genji’s worried queries, and looks for an exit. When she crosses the warehouse she finds Winston standing between her and the service door. His heavy brow crumples.

“Can I help with anything, Angela?” he says. His eyes move from her face, widening at the soft sounds of Genji gentling Jesse’s hurting moans. “What’s -- “

“Oh, yes,” Angela says, adjusting her footing, impatient. “There’s two more vials of nanoserum in the case. There should be a jet injector. Make sure to administer one-fourth a vial for every half hour. Directly to the neck. It will be enough until I get back.”

“Until you get back.”

“Yes,” Angela says, re-shouldering the fresh rifle case. “I trust you will do an excellent job, Winston.”

She does not get more than a few steps towards the door when Winston’s hand dwarfs her wrist, holding her back.

“Angela,” he says, “we need you here.”

“There are others who need me more,” she replies.

Angela touches Winston’s furred cheek and smiles, serenity making her feel strangely light. She thinks Winston must be tired, the way he shudders, the way his eyes linger on her as he steps aside to let her leave.

**

MR. KING: Ms. Naveen, may I ask, ask your client one thing? A personal, interpersonal question about, about the history between Morrison and Reyes.

MS. NAVEEN: It depends, Mr. King.

MR. KING: Doctor, it is a matter of record that Commander Morrison and Captain Reyes have known each other for over thirty years.

DR. ZIEGLER: Yes.

MR. KING: And that that they were married for the majority of those years.

DR. ZIEGLER: Yes.

MR. KING: And that you have known both of those men for, what is it, nearly twenty of those years?

DR. ZIEGLER: No, about, about fourteen. 

MR. KING: Still, a long time.

DR. ZIEGLER: Yes.

(STATIC)

MR. KING: So, you think, this is the personal question, Ms. Naveen, object if you will, did you ever think that, a possible altercation could occur, with, with this history? Possible. And that something, with this history, some people, excuse me, this kind of attachment might cause such a tragedy, this loss of life?

DR. ZIEGLER: Is it okay, Kuvira?

MS. NAVEEN: Yes, like we talked about.

MR. KING: Thank you, Ms. Naveen.

DR. ZIEGLER: You see. Sometimes, Mr. King, when the closest bonds break, all you can do is pray you stay out of the cross fire.

**

Headquarters had been home, once. To Angela, seventeen and fresh from the squalor of the refugee camps, it was a fairytale castle, rising white and glimmering, a promise of safety and security. Now, it is little more than a barren sea of jutting concrete and pipe, melted plastic and warped steel. Nothing remains of the proud curve of its glorious architecture, a bow in the middle that mimicked the embrace of an angel’s wings.

There are no aid workers to be found here. The UN has forbidden them from entering the crater, for fear of its own secrets being seen by outside eyes. It is Angela alone, wearing no more than fatigues and her gauntlets, carrying no triage supplies but the rifle strapped to her back. Security drones patrol only meters above the grounds, casting their searchlights onto the rubble, but Angela has not forgotten how to hide from their watch.

The collapsed roof provides better cover from the drones, and she is able to move freely. It does not take long to find the remains of the command room.

Amid the settling dust on the bay floor, there is a void where a body had lain. A shattered blue eyepiece lies beside a pool of thick, congealed blood. On either side of that, sets of boot prints, too narrow to belong to the man who’d died here. Someone had come to collect their property. The other body might be missing, too. If she can find evidence of such a grave robbery, that will be enough truth to bring home, but it will be yet another empty coffin to lower into the ground.

She discovers no further evidence of the missing corpse. Instead, she finds a broad streak of red-brown. It is Jesse’s blood, from where he’d struck the ground, landing on his arm and then his head and back, the blood at first a splatter, and then a drag, as Angela and Genji had done their best to stabilize him before their escape.

Her eyes follow the curve of the bloodstain, and there, beneath the fold of metal siding: a still, dark form.

He isn’t stiff at all when she lays her hands on him, and she drags him out from beneath his shelter. She rolls him over and Gabriel’s limbs dangle like they are loose in their sockets. His jaw hangs open, the muscle exposed and drying. His eyes have bulged out, red-veined and clouding, and are hard to close, but she manages.

Angela arranges him as one does a sleeping child: each arm and leg straightened, his torn fatigues smoothed down with care. She removes the chest plate of his armor, exposes his bruised chest.  She arranges the silvery metal of two wedding bands against his greyed flesh, briefly nauseated with cold guilt. The nanotech warms her palms, the healing light twisted around her gauntlets. Her hands hover over his breastbone.

First, compressions.

Gabriel’s ribs crack like straws, like the distant gunshot sound of tree branches breaking beneath the weight of winter ice. Angela’s glowing hands coax the dead flesh with heat and energy, pushing it towards renewal. She thinks of Jesse, warm and alive, when her arms tire. Then, the serum. She cannot afford for the security drones to hear the rifle-shot; she makes do with the injector, and plunges the golden liquid into Gabriel’s cold body.

And, finally, something new, insurance against failure: she claps her gloves together, summoning that lightning in her palms. It crackles, burns the hair off the backs of her hands, threatens to singe her flesh. She does not notice.

After the third shock, Gabriel’s limbs spasm, the muscles seizing. He coughs. For a moment the heady feeling of success washes over her, making her light-headed, making her feel as though she is floating.

Then, the cough becomes worse, wet and rancid. Bile and black blood dribble from the torn skin and between exposed teeth of Gabriel’s mouth; Angela’s heart seizes at the sight.

This is no miracle. She has not brought back the dead. She has brought the dead to life.

**

“ _You can’t be serious.”_

_Angela has known Jack almost half her life, now, knows his expressions, his body language like her mother tongue. He is mentor, father, friend; he has been the one to encourage her to be true to her desire for peace. The betrayal on his face is almost a blow to her confidence. But Gabriel is all the things Jack is to her, too, so she stands firm.  
_

“ _I have scheduled a deposition with the UN,” she repeats. Behind her, Gabriel takes in a sharp breath. She knows he has not expected support. “I plan to tell them that Blackwatch was an arm of Overwatch, and all their operations sanctioned. That there is no conspiracy. That there is no coupe. That Blackwatch has only ever done its duty.”_

_Jack tilts his rifle down, stepping forward. “They're already hanging us out to dry, Angela!”_

_Angela’s chin jerks up. “As you have done to Blackwatch? To the men and women who bled in our bright shadow for so many years, only to have their back turned on them?”_

“ _Angela,” Jack begins, “this is bigger than that. Blackwatch knew their duty. There are so many other lives at --”_

“ _What of their lives, Jack? You forget, I tended their wounds myself. I signed off on reports when Overwatch burned them. I saw them die. And you say that other lives weigh more than theirs, now?”_

“ _But those folks are gone, now, angel,” says one of the Strike soldiers. He steps out from behind Jack, lifting his helmet. “What about them that’re still around?”_

_Now Angela takes in a surprised breath. It is Gabriel that speaks the name, though, as though it were a mouthful of glass and salt: “Jesse?”_

“ _Sorry, Boss,” Jesse says, his smile sad. “I just -- I thought we could talk.”_

“ _We have talked about this,” Gabriel snaps. “You and I. I thought you understood. What the hell did you say to him, Jack?”_

_Jack can only make a single plea -- "Gabi, please" -- when Gabriel steps forward, a wild look in his eyes, and here is where the memories blur as Angela tries to weave the chaos together into something logical:_

_Jack, feeling threatened, must have shot first. The bullets hit a fuel tank, or some poorly stored ordinance. Gabriel shouts Jesse’s name as the explosion blooms, and Angela hears the wet crack of Jesse’s bones on the bay floor below. She takes great leaps down the deck stairs, hears Genji calling behind her, roused to attention by the explosion and shouting. And then, the screaming, the destruction, the shudder of the building as it, and the family it had sheltered for so many years, begins to break apart at its very foundation._

**

From that ruined throat, a howl: “ _What have you done?_ ”

Gabriel’s waking scream is a chord of a thousand voices, the void howling its displeasure at losing a coveted prize.. And then: smoke, so much smoke.

Angela chokes on it, waving, trying to draw in clean air. She realizes it was not the blast that killed Gabriel: he had died of the smoke, after. It had strangled the oxygen in his blood. It had blackened his lungs. It had pulled the soul out through his ruined mouth.

Ashes and soot fill Angela’s vision, and she is at last forced back. A whirlwind of oily black rises before her, churning in on itself like molten rock. It darts forward like a sea snake, twisting around the back of her neck, raising gooseflesh with its deathly chill.

“ _Look at our little Doctor Frankenstein_.” Gabriel’s voice is in her ear, a whisper as intimate as a lover’s caught breath. “ _Will wonders ever cease with you, Angela? I’m so impressed._ ”

“Gabriel, I -- we can fix this,” Angela stammers, “just try to remain calm.”

“ _Calm? Oh, I am calm. As one can be, with a foot in the grave._ ”

“Come back with me,” The desperation makes her dizzy. “The others -- we can put our minds together, work something out.”

“ _Oh, the kids_.” The whorl of darkness twists, stretching like a lounging cat. “ _I can’t wait to see them. Give those little shits a piece of my mind. There won’t even be enough for you to work your magic, when I’m finished with them._ ”

This is not Gabriel. Gabriel was not a crude man, a violent one, a cruel one. He never had the venom that is in this creature’s voice. But it must be him, her nanoserum binding his body’s cells to the inorganic stuff that had killed him, and his soul, somehow, clinging to those remains. Clinging to pain, desperation, regret.

“Gabriel, I’m so sorry.” Angela’s voice is too thick, too dry. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

A chuckle, dark and savage. “ _Having regrets, Doctor? It doesn’t become you. Why don’t we make this fun. A game for us to play._ ”

“Gabriel, please. This isn’t a game.”

The miasma froths before her in a never-ending cycle of decay and restoration. _“Shall I wait outside your window and watch you doctor that gaggle of ingrates? Shall I strangle your lovers to death on your marriage bed? So, so many options._ ”

“Gabriel,” she pleads, “I was only doing what I thought was right.”

This, somehow, sparks fury: “ _I didn’t ask for your help._ ”

“This isn’t what I wanted for you!”

Gabriel answers her with a scream: “ _You knew exactly what you were doing!”_

He bears down on her, maw open, his breath like spoiled meat. Angela trembles, feels her legs weaken, exhaustion and fatigue beginning to overcome her.

Gabriel’s fingers, colder than mountain winter, grasp her jaw and jerk her upright. “ _You can’t turn away now,_ ” he seethes.

So close, Angela can see his once handsome face rot away, skin and muscle sloughing off his skull until nothing remains but ivory bone and empty sockets.

“ _Look at me, Angela,”_ Gabriel hisses, holding her still. “ _Look at what you’ve done._ ”

**

MR. KING: Doctor Ziegler, I, appreciate, I know we’ve talked about many personal things.

DR. ZIEGLER: Yes.

MR. KING: It must, have been difficult for you, to try and play peacemaker with men you’ve known nearly your whole life.

DR. ZIEGLER: Yes, certainly.

MR. KING: Did you, were you ever tempted, no, allow me to rephrase, were you ever asked to take a side?

MS. NAVEEN: Objection.

MR. KING: I don’t need to know the side.

JUDGE LI: Overruled. Mr. King, rephrase the question, again.

MR. KING: Thank you, Your Honor. Doctor, did you, at any time, were you approached to do more than mediate?

MS. NAVEEN: Objection.

JUDGE LI: Sustained. Mr. King.

MR. KING: Yes, Your Honor. Doctor, I am trying to, to clear your name, here.

DR. ZIEGLER: I believe that is Ms. Naveen’s job.

MR. KING: Yes. But, you should go on record, stating your neutrality. Not just an interview.

DR. ZIEGLER: I did not make a choice between Jack, or Gabriel. I stayed out of it.

(STATIC)

MR. KING: So there was something to stay out of?

MS. NAVEEN: Objection, Your Honor.

JUDGE LI: Sustained.

**

Reinhardt’s ancestral home is an ancient mansion, sprawling amid rolling fields of green grass and wildflowers. It is idyllic, a perfect place for convalence. Angela mounts the mansion’s vine-laced stairs, rallying herself, fighting the tremble of her knees with each step.

It is then she feels the fine hairs on her neck rise. A presence, watching her, displacing the air around her. Another soft whip of sound, and Angela stops breathing, expecting that awful black cloud.

Instead, she inhales the smell of the Slipstream’s stardust, metallic and familiar. Lena is suddenly in Angela’s arms, burrowing her brown head against Angela’s shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Angie,” she says, muffled, “really, I am.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, my little mouse.” Angela pets the younger woman’s hair, hoping Lena does not notice her trembling. “How is our patient?”

“Trying to escape, and ruin all your hard work.” It’s Winston. He has set up a small command console in the foyer, the transparent glass flickering with images and words she cannot make out, so far away. “You should go and give him some medicine to keep him down.”

“Like a kick to the head,” Lena adds.

Angela’s laugh bursts from her in sudden relief. “Oh, you know that won’t work on our gentleman outlaw. Nothing keeps him down for long,” she says, and takes the marble stairways to the bedrooms.

Genji waits for her outside of Jesse’s room, his helmet lifted. Without the visor to block it, she can see his flushed face, the smooth scars drawn upward with his smile. The sweetness of him returns the stolen beauty to his features.

“He is awake, and well.” The words are just short of giddy. He opens the door for her as he speaks.

“Is he?”

Genji reaches for her hands, gathering them close to his chest. He bows his head over them, a supplicant, blessed. “You have worked miracles again, Doctor.”

Angela’s smile fades to no more than a wince. “I would not call it a miracle, little prince. Just science.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

There’s that deep and drawling voice she thought she’d never hear again. Genji leads her towards Jesse’s bedside, as if he knows she needs the coaxing.

“Hey, darlin’,” Jesse says, watching her settle. His russet hair is dull and lank, brown skin is still ashen, but his smile is warm, his dark eyes clear and aware. The sight of him loosens something in her, at least a little.

“Hello, sweetling,” Angela says. She reaches for him, touches his cheek, and he nuzzles her fingers like a tired cat. “I hear you are being terrible.”

Jesse pouts, squinting his eyes open at her. “That’s a damn lie. I’m bein’ a perfect gentleman.”

“Liar,” Genji says, almost prim, definitely serene. “He has been a devil.”

“If Genji says so, it must be true.”

“Now don’t rag on me,” Jesse says, his nose wrinkling. “I’ve been ill.”

“If being dead is ill,” Genji murmurs.

The three of them settle into a strained silence. Jesse settles back into his pillows. When he speaks again, his voice is uncharacteristically small. “Was I really dead?”

“Yes.” Angela sees no point in lying to him. “You were.”

Genji cuts in: “But not for long.”

“Don’t know how I got so lucky.” There is hesitation in his words now, questions clear on his tongue, names unspoken; facts she knows he isn’t ready for yet.

“You had to live, Jesse, and you knew it. You’re our heart,” Angela says, and she means it. “You’re the strongest of all of us.”

“No, angel,” he says softly, reaching out with his remaining hand, “you are.”

He touches her cheek. Angela leans against that calloused hand, for the moment allowing herself to believe his words.

The moment passes with a sudden shiver: Angela’s skin prickles, her stomach twists. Another gust of chill air, enough to stir the curtains.

It is not Lena, this time.

“Angela?” Genji asks. Her boys have not noticed anything is wrong, only her distraction. “What is it?”

She inhales, wavers, and tells the first of many lies.

“It’s nothing, my little prince.”

In the corner of her eye, a dark form sways in the corner, too solid to be a fleeting shadow, filling her senses with the acrid stench of wet smoke. A warning. A promise.

She cannot look away.

**

MS. NAVEEN: Mr. King, I don’t appreciate what you’re doing.

MR. KING: What is that?

MS. NAVEEN: We have not sworn in Doctor Ziegler to be a character witness for the deceased Captain, Mr. King.

MR. KING: My questions, this is for her benefit, Ms. Naveen.

MS. NAVEEN: No, it isn’t.

(STATIC)

UNKNOWN: I’m cold, Angela.

MR. KING: If she has important information, she can, put this business to rest. Exonerate her, and others. Tell us what we need to hear.

DR. ZIEGLER: What you want to hear?

MR. KING: The truth, Doctor, is what I want to hear.

MS. NAVEEN: Mr. King, stop.

MR. KING: I want the truth, Doctor. What happened at that base?

DR. ZIEGLER: (Speaks German) [TRANSLATION: I am not a dog that does tricks.]

(STATIC)

MR. KING: What was that? We need an interpreter in here?

DR. ZIEGLER: It is not my fault you do not know any other civilized tongues, Mr. King.

MR. KING: The witness is becoming quite hostile.

DR. ZIEGLER: (Speaks German) [TRANSLATION: Fuck your mouth, pig.]

(STATIC)

MS. NAVEEN: Angela, stop, don’t answer anything else. Mr. King is out of line, Your Honor. My client has endured enough already.

JUDGE LI: Agreed. Mr. King. I will ask you to step down.

MR. KING: Yes, Your Honor.

(STATIC)

MS. NAVEEN: Angela, it’s okay. Come down.

DR. ZIEGLER: (Speaks German) [TRANSLATION: I could not make a choice. Oh God, Gabriel.]

MS. NAVEEN: Angela, please stop, stop talking. Can we, Your Honor, we need to go off the record, recess, take a recess, please. My client, she’s distressed.

JUDGE LI: Yes.

DR. ZIEGLER: (Speaks German) [TRANSLATION: Oh, Gabriel. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Look what I’ve done to you. Look what I’ve done.]

MR. KING: I’m cold. Are you cold?

(STATIC)

JUDGE LI: It’s gotten cold, yes. Court is in recess. Reporter, turn the recording off.

(END TRANSCRIPTION)

**Author's Note:**

> First, thanks to [Shoi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shoi), for her excellent editing and her neverending support for my writing. Thank you for punching everything up!
> 
> Second, my tlist for their support, in particular AO3 user [albion](http://archiveofourown.org/users/albion) for dealing with me screaming in their DMs -- check out their OVW work!
> 
> Excerpts were taken from Overwatch canon material ("Fading Glory") and from character dialog, both used and unused.
> 
> Check out my series, [Sequence](http://archiveofourown.org/series/554284) for more in this canon!


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